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In association with Podtacular, I have made a couple of ODST Achievement guides to cover most of the basic campaign achievements. I cover specific level achievements like Both Tubes and Wraith Killer and general achievements like Boom, Headshot and Dark Times. Most of them are up on my Youtube page available in HD, but there are more coming soon.

So while at MLG Dallas, I got the chance to play the new multiplayer mode introduced in ODST: Firefight.  Each level in Firefight is supposed to represent some playable area in the ODST Campaign, and there are a few with daytime and nighttime variations: perfectly excuse to use the Visor mode.  Also, who can resist killing onslaughts of Covenant, especially grunts.

As far as gameplay, many have compared Firefight to Horde mode from Gears.  Since I have not played any Gears multiplayer, I don’t know what that’s like, but I do know that everyone will have fun with it.  Covenant come in waves: 5 waves in a round, 3 rounds in a set.  After each round, different skulls come on or off, and as you get through the sets, the difficulty increases.  That covers most of the basics for Firefight.

A couple of things that are not clearly evident: Engineers are in a few of the multiplayer maps.  Engineers are covenant characters that go around and heal other covenant units giving them things like overshields.  As Shishka said, “If two Engineers are around you, you’re screwed.”  Another thing that came to somewhat as a surprise when I played is the different areas Covenant waves can come from.  Just when you think you know where they can come from, they come from somewhere else.  It takes a while to get used to it, but once you have the hand of it, good teamwork will keep you alive.  I found turrets to be a big help with another friend nearby helping fend off closing Covenant while you mow down waves that are off in the distance.  Be careful when the drop ships come though.  They will tear you up.  Hunters take a while to take down as well since you aren’t super soldiers with power weapons, so have one of your teammates go around and shoot it in the back while the others distract it.

I definitely hope everyone pre-ordered it or plan to get it, because this game is definitely worth the $60.

It’s that time of year again, which has lead to me not being able to keep up too much here and in the production forums, but homework is starting to settle down and I’ve gotten a good grasp of what my schedule is looking like.  Machinimas should be put into production soon and more frequent blog posts.  Couple of things I wanted to note: I have uploaded some of my favorite clips in HD to youtube, which means, for all my Podtacular people out there, an HD capture service may be in the works for you to get HD videos.  This will probably work in conjunction with Amplified’s HD capture service, but more details to come.  In the mean time, I’m really excited about Halo 3: ODST, which I will post about soon, before it comes out.

Well, the first day of e3 has passed and I have to say that I’m pleased with most of what I saw.  Now I was at work all day, so I had to come back and watch replays on IGN, which, in and of itself, wasn’t that bad.  Now I’m specifically talking about the Microsoft presentation for the XBOX 360, since that’s my primary interest in e3.

Starting off with new game announcements, Left 4 Dead 2 looks very promising especially after the success of Left 4 Dead.  New weapon items will definitely change the game play into a nice melee combat combination instead of just a zombie shoot-’em-up (which is still exciting to play).  With big successes with their first game on the console, I don’t see them backing out of it anytime soon.  Personally, I like PC gaming more than console, and I own L4D through Steam, so I am really looking forward to the game, whether on the console, or the PC.

Now for the Beatles Rock Band, I don’t see it being much of a hit other than the fact that you now get to play the Beatles’ songs.  Granted, the fact that they opened up the presentation will probably turn more heads than if they weren’t there, but it’s not an item I’m looking to buy.

Alan Wake: how do you classify this?  Interesting game play and storyline is sure to make this game unique.  Looks like a FPS with a twist, but not enough information to tell anything more for this game.  This is definitely something I’ll keep my eye on.

Now onto my Halo rant of this post.  Halo 3: ODST definitely takes a new view on the Halo Universe and alters the game play in a way that will hopefully open up the storyline more.  One of the things that has really held the Halo franchise back, in my opinion, is the fact that the whole story is linear, and there’s no way to deviate from the story or make up your own path.  With that said, I hope there aren’t too many flashbacks in the game, and that it stays somewhat centrally focused, instead of hopping from one ODST to another.  The new HUD is going to change gamestyle play from what it has been in previous games, requiring a little more tactics than people are used to.  Onto the new multiplayer mode, Firefight kinda sounds like COD’s Nazi Zombies, but you are just fending off a ton of Covenant.  Didn’t hear much about this, but I’m hoping it turns out well when released in September.

OK, now we all know that Halo was too good of a franchise to give up, and it’s no surpirse Bungie had a Top Secret project involving Halo.  Now I remember somewhere reading that Bungie would do a prequel to Halo, and that’s what they have done with Halo Reach.  Now I could rant on all day saying that I called this move, but with how little we got in the teaser, I’m not sure what to expect from the game.  Now if you have read the books, you will know about what happened to Reach, so now I’m wondering what kind of game this is going to be.  It will most likely be a FPS, but what will the storyline be like, how are the Spartans involved, etc.  Lots of room for speculation, so we’ll just have to wait for more.

The XBOX Dashboard: Personally, I liked the old dashboard better over the NXE dash, but you take what you get.  Now I’m a college student and I spend a good majority of the time at my computer, so it seems like these extra features they are adding on are kinda pointless.  Granted, I see a lot of people using last.fm for maybe things like parties or such, but Facebook and Twitter?  How involved does XBOX Live have to be to take over the computer?  Next thing you know, you are going to have the ability to have Google on your box (Microsoft probably wouldn’t allow that though).  Granted, the cool factor may have some role here, but if you are too lazy to get off the couch and type a couple of lines, then there’s something wrong.  Now I do like the fact that XBOX will link your Facebook to your Gamertag, and that would be a good way to find your friends that you didn’t know had an XBOX, but I think I’ll stick to my computer.  Now I’m not saying that they are bad additions, I just think it’s not that practical, especially when you have them on your phone, the ultimate mobile device.

Project Natal is perhaps my most favorite thing out of the presentation (other than the Halo stuff, of course).  Now the demonstration of the device seemed to point out that they are still working out kinks, but it looks very promising.  Future games will be very exciting if this technology proves to be what XBOX advertises it to be.  But with no release date, there’s no way to tell when this will be available and how developers will be able to use the technology in their games.

On a final note, I’ve never heard of Metal Gear, so I don’t know what to think about it, Forza I don’t care for, because I like Burnout and NFS more, and when can I get Pokemon on my XBOX?